Michael’s Flyer, a stakes-placed winner and pensioned stallion, was euthanized due to the infirmities of old age April 4 at Ellen Jackson’s Victory Rose Thoroughbreds in Vacaville, Calif. He was 27.
A son of Flying Paster, Michael’s Flyer won four of 29 starts over four seasons and earned $117,087. He finished second in the 1992 Berkeley Handicap at Golden Gate Fields.
European champion Mastercraftsman’s first runner as a sire was a winner, as Master Carpenter took a maiden special weight event on Friday at Leicester in England.
The 2-year-old colt, out of the winning In The Wings mare Fringe, ran greenly in the early going but rallied strongly and pulled clear in the final sixteenth. He finished the about five furlong race in 1:04.03 over turf rated as soft, defeating second-place Beau Nash by 2 1/2 lengths.
The story of Funny Cide almost reads like a Hollywood screenplay.
A modestly priced New York-bred before it was cool to be a New York-bred, Funny Cide was bought by Sackatoga Stables, a group of likable high-school chums who traveled to races like a varsity football team going to regionals, and together, they went on a journey that took them to the doorstep of Triple Crown immortality.
In recent years, Acclamation’s life has changed every few months.
When he was not based at the track with trainer Don Warren, amassing a career record of 11 wins in 30 starts, six Grade 1 victories, and earnings of $1,958,048, he was resting at owner Bud Johnston’s farm in Sanger, Calif.
In 1949, trainer Henry Dailey and owner Alec Ramsey pulled their unbeaten star out of retirement to compete against his own Triple Crown-winning son. The older horse won in a battle royal and was promptly returned to his upstate New York farm.
Far-fetched? Perhaps, but then again, maybe not altogether. Dailey, Ramsey, and their ebony-coated champion were penned to life by Walter Farley in his beloved novel “The Black Stallion,” but the scenario described has been played out in the real world for centuries, for better and, sometimes, for worse.
Slew City Slew, a multiple Grade 1 winner and earner of more than $1.1 million on the racetrack and a productive sire at Airdrie Stud responsible for multiple Grade 1 winner Lava Man, among others, died Thursday at the Midway, Ky., farm due to the infirmities of old age. He was 29.
Dalakhani, winner of the Cartier Award as European Horse of the Year in 2003 and a sire of classic winners in Europe and Breeders’ Cup winners in the U.S., will shuttle to Cornerstone Stud in Angaston, South Australia, for the 2013 Southern Hemisphere breeding season.
Prominent Florida stallion Montbrook, sire of champion sprinter Big Drama, has been pensioned from stud duty due to declining fertility.
The 23-year-old Buckaroo horse will live out his retirement at J. Michael O'Farrell Jr.'s Ocala Stud. Montbrook, the state's leading sire in 2002, 2003, 2008, and 2009, was born, raised, and stood his entire stud career at the Ocala, Fla., facility.
Multiple Grade 1 winner and prominent Japanese sire Brian's Time was euthanized April 4 after fracturing his leg in a paddock accident at Arrow Stud on the island of Hokkaido, Japan. The Roberto horse, who along with his fellow U.S.-bred contemporary Sunday Silence exerted a major influence on the development of the Japanese bloodstock industry, was 28.
